037: Steve Tomlinson on Farming with a Restaurant

10/22/2015

Farmer to Farmer Podcast Guest - Steve Tomlinson

Steve Tomlinson manages Great Road Farm just four miles from downtown Princeton, New Jersey. Making its home on 112 acres, Great Road Farm has over seven acres in vegetable production in close partnership with Agricola restaurant in Princeton. A graduate of Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Steve worked for artists Christo and Jeane Claude to build an expansive installation titled “The Gates” in Central Park, and managed a warehouse before starting over working on farms after the 2008 financial crash. We talk about how Steve leveraged his background outside of agriculture into managing Great Road Farm, the joys and challenges of working for a farm that is owned by a restaurateur, and the nuts and bolts of working with the chefs and restaurant to meet their needs and the farm’s.

Quotes from the Show

I have a lot of farmer friends around here, and we’re all kind of doing the same thing… we have potlucks together, and if Agricola needs something, I try to call my friends.

It’s very difficult to sell to restaurants unless you have a real relationship.

If a chef comes out to the field and sees all of the produce that I’m talking about, he’s like, okay, we’re going to make this work.

The better the communication, the better the relationship is.

There’s a lot of education involved to understand how the chefs work and how they order and what they’re expecting.

Just the reality of local produce that’s not coming from California, you need to find the right chef who can work with that and use it as a strength for the restaurant.

On things that he’s learned in his chef’s cooler: It’s mostly how people pack things and how they store them, as well… how they use a carrot, are they peeling it, are they dicing it…

Back then, I tried to use the word beyond organic, and that pissed off a lot of people off. I didn’t really realize what I was doing… if you want this movement to move forward, and you move this way, then you should just go ahead and do it.

I made the decision that I’m going to get certified organic and I’m going to support NOFA-New Jersey and the movement here.

I look at farming as a whole systems design. It just really fell into place.

Show Links

Agricola, the restaurant Great Road Farm works with, just published a self-titled cookbook that includes contributions from Steve.

Steve talked about using the app Slack for communication with the chefs at Agricola.

Steve mentioned that Great Road is selling to Fresh Nation. https://freshnation.com/

Steve’s favorite tool on the farm is his multi-tool, the Leatherman Skeletool.

Steve’s favorite resources are Growing for Market, Acres USA, and the Farmer to Farmer Podcast.

We didn’t talk about it in the show, but here’s a video that gives a nice overview of the farm:

Meet the Farmer from Agricola on Vimeo.

Download

2 Comments

Victoria

10/29/2015 07:45:52 am

What a great relationship between a farm and a restaurant. He said he wanted to support the local food movement by organically certifying the farm. A red flag went up when he describe his pricing strategy of just looking at 'what the local market' price is. I see other non-profit or quasi non-profit farms use this strategy, and what it does is hide inefficiencies in the farm, because this way the farm doesn't need look at the cost to produce the items because someone else is covering expenses. I think the best way to help increase local food, it to have more farmers, and this can only be done if it produces a liveable income. The non-profit and quasi non-profit farms are often the ones potential farmers visit or work at first- and they should be modeling not only good growing techniques but also good business strategies (like knowing the cost of production, cutting out waste). If this is not done then we price our future out of a livelihood. (PS, I know non-profit farms may have to keep some inefficiencies to serve their population, but the should still know their cost of production,etc.)

Steve Tomlinson link

10/31/2015 07:59:27 am

Victoria how do you price your vegetables? Do the prices change every year or even season to season based on how well your crop grew? If you have a great crop of carrots and harvest them quickly and efficiently do you lower your price? We know the cost of production, but we still have to sell at a price that is in a range that the market allows. I reach out to local farms to get their produce into the restaurant. We discuss production costs and come to an agreement about how much the produce should be. That helps my farming community produce a livable wage.